Immortality on planet Earth is impossible. In five billion years or so, the sun is going to turn into a red giant star about 100 times bigger than it is today. The Earth will be vaporized as the oceans boil away. So we can’t live forever on Earth, but what if we could live for 100,000 years, or even 1,000 years? Today the average human life is about 75 years. What if there was a possibility that you could be resurrected or reanimated after your physical death? Would you be interested? If so, the science of cryogenics may what you’re looking for.

Is It For Real?

Imagine you were living just 100 years ago and someone told you that one day a man would walk on the moon. What if they told you that one day you could cut open a man’s chest, remove his heart, and replace it with an artificial one made of materials that don’t yet exist? What would you say? You would most likely laugh at the person making such claims.

Today, claiming you could take a recently “dead” brain, perfuse it with a special “antifreeze” and cool the brain with liquid nitrogen to preserve the brain’s internal structure and memory sounds similarly ludicrous.

Consider, however, that humans have been revived hours after drowning in cold water. Their lungs are filled with water, their hearts have stopped beating, and they are dead by any medical definition that exists. But people have survived such situations with their mental functions and memory completely intact.

Perhaps a few hundred years from now, science will have advanced to a point where reviving a properly cooled brain is possibly after 100 years instead of a few hours? Considering even the possibility of this can challenge a person on moral, ethical, religious, and scientific grounds simultaneously. There are plenty of sites on the Internet that address these issues, we’re here just to talk about cost.

Cost Of Whole Body vs. Neuropreservation

There are about a half a dozen cryogenics companies in the United States today, all them legitimate companies utilizing the best currently known cryropreservation methodologies. There are two methods these companies use to cryropreserve you after you are legally dead (i.e. your heart has completely stopped beating):

Whole Body Preservation

Neuropreservation

Whole body means just that. Your entire body stays intact and is frozen in liquid nitrogen. Neuropreservation is a euphemism for the macabre thought of having your head severed from your body and just your head stored in liquid nitrogen.

On average, whole body cryropreservation costs about $150,000. Neuropreservation is somewhat cheaper, averaging about $90,000. Some companies also charge an annual membership fee while you’re still alive. These fees average around $500/year.

Additionally, you may pay an additional premium of up to $10,000 for a “standby team” that is by your side as you die who quickly get your brain in a state that has the best probability of being revived intact in the future.
(Google “brain vitrification” for more information).